The mayor of Newark, New Jersey, is offering $1,000 to anybody who anonymously provides information on “illegal guns” in the city. In a video on posted on the City of Newark web page, the “Honorable” Cory A. Booker declares guns on the streets are unacceptable and he is offering the cash incentive to snitches.

However, there is a very obvious problem with the mayor’s program — how will the snitches tell the difference between an illegal and legal gun? How will the police tell the difference between a gang-banger with an illegal gun and a citizen exercising his or her right under the Second Amendment?

Greedy snitches will call in “tips” on everybody who owns a firearm. In fact, Booker’s video would have us believe all firearms are illegal. Booker makes the distinction near the end of the video, not that it matters — the distinction will be lost on snitches interested only in pocketing a thousand bucks (the mayor waves a fantail of cash in the video to make his point and entice the snitches).

It is a situation destined for tragedy. How will the police and gung-ho SWAT teams tell the difference between legal and illegal firearms? How many innocent people will be arrested, harassed, treated like criminals for the crime of owning a firearm? New Jersey has a concealed carry law. How many people exercising that right will be attacked by Booker’s police? How many of them will have their legal weapons confiscated? How many of them will be shot down by trigger-happy cops?

Finally, this country’s insane “zero tolerance” drug laws are the primary reason there are gang-bangers on the streets with illegal weapons killing each other and innocents caught up in the crossfire.

Booker would do better to decriminalize drugs in his city instead of creating a snitch culture that will ultimately end up in more dead people.